Saturday, November 21, 2015

Staunton, November 21 – Analysts and
commentators have pointed to a variety of factors that they suggest are behind
the growth of terrorism in the world in recent decades, but a KPRF Duma deputy
has identified one few have talked much about. Sergey Gavrilov says that
“terrorism is the result of the destruction of the Soviet Union.”

But this is not an indirect tip of
the hat to Samuel Huntington’s ideas about “the clash of civilizations” but
rather an adumbration of a world many in Moscow and some in the West would like
restored: a world of blocs in which the leader of each would have a vested
interest in maintaining stability in its clients, regardless of how
authoritarian such regimes might be.

Such a world might again purchase a
temporary stability as it did in parts of the world during the Cold War, but it
would do so only at the cost of depriving millions of the possibility of
freedom and of creating the seedbeds of terrorism that such brittle
authoritarian regimes would inevitably once again become.

The coordinator of the Duma
deputies’ group for defense of Christian values tells the Russian nationalist
portal, “Russkaya liniya,” that “the USSR contained all these trends and
guaranteed peace in the Middle East.” Its demise created “a vacuum” terrorists
have filled

Such groups, and ISIS is only one of
them, and the weak authoritarian regimes in which they have emerged, including
Syria and Iraq, Gavrilov continues, are “the products of American colonial
policy which destroys states, undermines traditional values, violates human
rights, and supports terrorists.”

Citing a recent declaration by the
presidium of the KPRF Central Committee, the Duma deputy says that “for the
destruction of the world terrorist threat, one must recognize that an
international anti-terrorist coalition is necessary but it is not a panacea.”
Other steps are needed as well, he argues.

“Any political steps in this
direction,” Gavrilov says, “will not be effective without a real struggle for
the future of the entire world in Syria because ISIS today is the chief force
antagonistic to society. And [Russia] over a quite short time has achieved
greater success in the struggle with terrorists than the US has over a longer
time despite its coalition.”

According to the KPRF deputy, “it
should not be forgotten that namely the West often supports terrorism as it did
with the overthrow of power in Ukraine in 2014, an action carried out by the
hands of pro-fascist groups.” The world “closed its eyes two the bestial
actions of the militants in the Maidan and also to the fact of the murders of
dozens of people in Odessa.”

“The struggle with
terrorism is both correct and necessary,” he says. “And the unification of the
world against the terrorist threat is something every healthy-minded person
supports. But for this tumor to be destroyed, everything that promotes its
growth must be rooted out –in particular, the dividing of terrorists into ‘good’
and ‘bad,’” something the West practices.

Having devoted most of his interview
to the idea that the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War division
of the world lies behind the rise of terrorism, Gavrilov says at the end that “besides
this,” poverty, which he insists is the product of capitalism, also plays a
role and must be overcome if terrorism is to be defeated.